AllFreeNovel
Share Us
After we close up and get everything cleaned up, she and I walk out together. In early June in the mountains, it still cools off considerably at night and the air feels good against my heated skin.
Lila sees the man leaning against my car before I do. “Do you know him?”
It takes me a moment to focus in on the person, standing just out of reach of the light pole and leaning against my front fender, one knee bent.
At first, I think it’s one of the guys I flirted with earlier. They’d mentioned something about meeting up to go to a party when my shift ended. “It’s fine.”
Then the man tips his head and raises two fingers to his brow and my blood goes ice cold.
“You sure?” Lila’s probably noticing that my steps have slowed.
“Of course.” I force confidence into my voice. “I know him. It’s no problem.” And I don’t want her to know him. I don’t want him to know she matters to me.
“Let me know when you get home.” She gives me a quick side hug. “I’ll be by the farm on Wednesday.”
“I’ll text you.” Of course, Lila makes time to help out at the farm, even with her busy schedule. She’s genuinely kind.
Unlike me, who just pretends to be.
Dell knows I’ve seen him and, if I run and beg Lila for a ride home, he’ll just follow me or track me down. Dell’s never been good about letting something go. Especially not me.
I stop a couple of feet from him. Encountering an ex-boyfriend is never an easy situation, but it’s worse when that ex is a reminder of a very dark time in my life, of a person I wish I’d never been. And of my terrible taste in men.
He was my bad boy phase. It lasted way too long.
It still makes me cringe that I used to believe I loved him. I was so desperate to be loved and feel like I belonged I stopped paying attention. I stopped listening to what I didn’t want to hear and only saw what I wanted to see.
“It’s been a minute.” I cross my arms over my chest and try to peer through the darkness to get a read on him. He doesn’t move out of the shadows. “Didn’t think I’d see you again after I turned you down last time.”
“Used to be, you thought an hour was too long to go without seeing me, babe.” His features are in shadow, but I once knew them as well as my own, maybe better. The way his face was always stubbled, no matter how often he shaved. The sharp lines and planes of his cheeks and the emptiness in his deep blue eyes.
Once upon a time, I thought I could fill that hole in him, and it took me way too long to figure out he’s got no interest in loving anything or anyone. He’d rather rage against the world and every conceived slight, twisting and destroying every beautiful thing he can find.
I believed if he could get past the anger, he could be a good person, but judging by the hard set of his jaw, he hasn’t gotten there yet.
“I was a stupid kid. I’ve outgrown it.” I don’t ask how he found me. Dell and I were together back in Roanoke, where I lived until I moved here nine months ago to live with my sisters.
Roanoke isn’t a small town, but the locals gossip just as much as they do in Catalpa Creek and my mother has a lot of friends and no reason to keep my whereabouts a secret. I’m also well-known in the area, more for the trouble I caused than for anything good, and people hate to see the bad girl make good by coming into a free house and a huge inheritance from her father.
It wouldn’t have taken much asking for Dell to find me.
“I like your hair.” His expression softens, and I see the boy he used to be when he let down his guard. “The blue streak is new.”
“What do you want, Dell?” As much as I hate to admit it, I’ll probably give him whatever he wants. Mixed in with all the bad are memories of laughter and the knowledge that he learned to be hard because his life allowed him no other way to be.
There’s still a part of me that wants to help him and an even bigger part of me that’s guilty about the man he’s become. I taught him what my father taught me. I helped Dell slide more fully into a life of crime.
He steps toward me, the light catching enough of him for me to see his blond hair is long and greasy, his stubble more of a beard. He’s not doing well. “Maybe I just want to see my best girl. I’ve missed you.”
“I’m not that girl anymore, Dell.” I steel my spine. Backing down or showing any sign of weakness is not an option. I will not let him drag me back into the past. “If you’re here, it’s because you want something from me, just like you did the last time you showed up. Remember that? Last summer, when you thought you could convince me to help you with a job and wound up in jail instead.”
He steps forward again, the light catching his eyes this time. He’s squinting in that way he does when he’s trying to figure something out. Like he’s trying to get a read on me, trying to decide how to play this.
Years ago, I taught him that a good con artist has to be a good listener, but listening’s never been one of his strong suits.
He relaxes as he studies me and dips his chin. “If you’d’ve helped me out, I never would have ended up in jail.”
I stand my ground and sublimate the feeling of guilt that’s trying to rise up. “You were driving a stolen car, Dell. You getting picked up for that isn’t on me.”
